food52's Best Recipe Using Fresh Basil

For 52 weeks, the website food52 has asked home cooks to submit their best recipes to contests that determine which will make it into a forthcoming cookbook. (We’ve been drooling over the photos every step of the way.) Those 52 weeks are up, but luckily, the contests aren’t. Over the summer, New York Times food writers Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs will continue to have one contest per week.

So what’s in it for the winners, if not a spot in Hesser’s and Stubbs’ cookbook? Whole Foods Market will give them $100 gift cards, OXO will award a bounty of kitchen products to the winners and runners-up, and at the end of the 8-week summer promotion, one of the winning recipe authors will be awarded the Grand Prize: a $1,000 gift card!

Here are the finalists for this week’s contest: Your Best Recipe Using Fresh Basil

What Hesser and Stubbs say: This is a dish that keeps on giving. The peach halves, gently poached in a fragrant syrup of white wine and sugar infused with fresh basil, make a gorgeous, aromatic dessert.